A variety of injuries and conditions require repair of soft tissue damage, or reattachment of soft tissue to bone and/or surrounding tissue. For example, when otherwise healthy tissue has been torn away from a bone, such as a shoulder rotator cuff tendon being partially or completely torn from a humerus (a rotator cuff tear), surgery is often required to reattach the tissue to the bone, to allow healing and a natural reattachment to occur. A number of devices and methods have been developed for performing these surgical repairs.
Many surgical procedures involve the need to pass a suture through soft tissue. Direct access to the tissue, however, may not be possible, for example, in an arthroscopic procedure. Generally, antegrade or retrograde suture passing techniques are used. An antegrade instrument, having a suture coupled thereto, can be forcibly driven through soft tissue, after which the suture is disengaged from the instrument and the instrument is removed from the surgical site. Antegrade suture passers are commonly used in arthroscopic rotator cuff repair. Retrograde passing involves driving an empty passer through the soft tissue and then manipulating it such that it captures a length of suture already inside the body. The passer is then removed from the soft tissue and pulls the suture through with it. In both antegrade and retrograde suture passing techniques, one of the disadvantages is that it can be quite difficult to disengage the suture from the jaws of the passer. Another drawback is that, after each suture passing, the surgical suture passer needs to be taken out of the patient's body to load a needle of the instrument with the suture for a subsequent passing step.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved suture passer devices, systems, and methods.